Rating: 
Summary: VERY good beginning to a new series/trilogy.
Review: Kylara "Ky" Vatta was thrown out of the Academy for trusting the wrong person. She returned home, avoiding media, to regroup herself. Her father, Gerard Vatta of Vatta Transport, decided Ky needed to go away until the media circus calmed down a bit. So she was sent as captain to take an old space craft on its last journey, to Belinta first and then to the scrap yard. She had a very small crew, but they were all veterans of space. At Belinta, Ky learned that the planet had ordered agriculture "ag" equipment over a year ago from Sabine Prime which was picked up by another transport company and never delivered. Belinta was desperate for the equipment. No one named Vatta had ever turned down a chance to profit and Ky was no different. Ky hoped to earn enough money so that her ship could be repaired instead of scrapped. Once the personal contract was signed, she was off to Sabine Prime. Sabine Prime gave Captain Vatta a bit of trouble, but not much, at first. Ky needed a new FTL drive before she could go anywhere. It was a vital part of the ship. Then she needed to purchase the ag equipment. The problem was figuring out how to get the money. FTL drives were very expensive. It all became worse when chaos erupted. Someone blew up the ISC's ansible platforms, so communications was all but gone. Then war ships came in. Ky's ship had no weapons and, with no FTL drive, no way to leave. She and her crew were defenseless and in the middle of a war between Sabine Prime and mercs! **** Very good beginning to what appears to be a series or trilogy. The plots are all tied up by the end, but many sub-plots are left dangling. I would very much like to find out how one or two of them end up, especially the one from the academy. The beginning of the book reminded me a bit of the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. Young woman, military back ground, done horribly wrong, underestimated, and very cunning. Yet by the half way mark, Ky had definitely separated herself from Honor in my mind. Ky has her own way of dealing with things and any emotional trash is put on hold until the crisis is over. All-in-all, VERY GOOD novel. I hope the sequel comes out quickly. **** Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.
Rating:
Summary: twists within twists
Review: Ms Moon gave us another nice space opera with her unique 'wheel within wheel' plot. It is very refreshing for Ms Moon to write a story where the main character isn't a military person.
Rating: 
Summary: Ignore Publishers Weekly!
Review: Not only did they not get it right in their review of Trading in Danger, but they stubbornly continue to diss the book in their review of the soon-to-be-released sequel:
"From Publishers Weekly:
After her debut in Moon's somewhat lackluster Trading in Danger (2003)..."
These generally reliable reviewers are simply wrong, wrong, wrong. Yeah, the polo never gets played, and Ky never gets around to completing the spaceship model--but that's because she's way too busy getting herself and her ship and crew out of one hair-raising adventure after another!
Far from slow-paced, you're not going to be able to put this one down! In fact, I came close to losing my job today because I made the mistake of picking this just-purchased paperback up over my morning cereal, read the whole thing in one six-hour sitting, and didn't mosey into work until 3 pm!
Let's put it this way: since even Publisher's Weekly is raving about the sequel (Marquee and Reprisal), and since this one is easily worth all of the currently-available five stars, Amazon.com may shortly be forced to add a sixth star to their rating system! In any event, with a sequel that good coming up, you'd better get in on the ground floor. Buy this book now and let it devour YOUR life, while in the meantime I try to talk my way back into the ranks of the employed...
Rating: 
Summary: Dissapointing read
Review: Not up to par for Elizabeth Moon. I expected a more engaging story.
Rating:
Summary: The Beginning of another amazing saga
Review: Somehow Elizabeth Moon has this amazing ability that allows her to write books of similar outlines but do it so well that each one is so incredibly different from its predecessor that you don't realize the recycled basic mold until you turn the last page and close the book with a satisfied sigh.
Trading in Danger is good stuff. Its got all the elements of a good space opera. Central character who's a flawed hero: Enter Kylara Vatta, newly disgraced ex-military academy dropout who's hoping to redeem herself on her milk run with one of the Vatta family's trading Ships.
Ky's bearing and personality is reminescent of David Weber's Honor Harrington, and leads one to think that Ky is the younger version of Honor personified.
Naturally, her milk run turns into an adventure when things start happening around her. Before the book is done we get a taste of space war, piracy, mutiny, conspiracy and rollicking adventure that culminates in Ky having to make an important decision about her future.
The book ends on an endearing note with a surprising lift for Ky courtesy of her Aunt Gracie. Those who have read Moon's Serrano series might be amused at the parallels that can be drawn between Ceceilia de Marktos (an Aunt herself!) and Gracie in this book.
Seems to me that Moon probably had an eccentric but lovable aunt messing with herself sometime or other! Because Aunts always make amusing cameos in her novels.
Rating:
Summary: ho hum ho hum it's off to space we go
Review: The book is 275 pages, a little thin and so are the secondary
characters and the plot. Most of the characters are amazingly
one dimensional. Secondary plot lines come and go without
being developed. What is the deal with the model present? The basic plot is interesting and well structured but the devoid
of the detail one expects from Moon. The book is complete - no
cliff hanger ending although there are plenty of story
opportunities. I hope any further books in this series are longer and richer. A Cliff Notes Elizabeth Moon book.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent new space opera from Elizabeth Moon
Review: This the first book of the Vatta space opera series. Kylara Vatta is a young woman from a rich shipping family who gets booted out a military academy, so her father assigns her the captancy of an old space freighter that needs to be piloted to a distant scrap yard. Naturally, things don't go according to plan.... Yes, there are a lot of simlarities between this book and the author's Serrano/Esmay books, but there are also enough differences to keep it interesting. I would say that the tone of this book is slightly more realistic and less warm/fuzzy than the Esmay books. I really like some of the unique personal issues that Kylara struggles with, and it's clear that Kylara is pursuing a very different course than the one Esmay Suiza took. I also like the fact that this book has a solid ending that doesn't leave you hanging. No series cliff-hangers here!
Rating:
Summary: I liked it!
Review: This was my first Elizabeth Moon book, so I cannot compare it to the Serrano series (although I do intend to read those). Ky is a great heroine--just the way you wish you had been in your early twenties. She finds herself captain of a spaceship on its last legs and thrust into almost more adventure than she can handle. That's the key word--"almost." She does handle things in a very mature manner, and earns the respect of everyone she meets. I enjoyed the book, although it could have been a little spicier (I'm a romance reader). But maybe this is Ms. Moon's style. I am going to begin the Serrano series and find out.
Rating:
Summary: A good start to a new series
Review: TRADING IN DANGER is a very good read; it's compelling, it's interesting, has many plot elements, and has a likable protagonist. Ms. Moon did an excellent job with the military elements, as I've come to expect over the years of reading her books; she was a military officer, and her analysis and understanding of military matters is spot on.
Thing is, Kylara Vatta's character definitely is that of a maverick wunderkind, which reminds me a bit of the Moon-Anne McCaffrey collaboration SASSINAK, at least of the stuff while Sassinak is young. That's not bad, mind; I enjoyed SASSINAK, and I enjoyed this, too (and the characters really aren't much alike, except for being smart women who've found a way to survive). Nor is this the female version of Miles Vorkosigan, either; Kylara Vatta is not a cell-damaged man stuck in a military society, and I didn't think much about the possible parallels to Lois McMaster Bujold's THE WARRIOR'S APPRENTICE until the book was over.
Trust me; the books aren't that much alike, and I don't think TRADING IN DANGER is a copy of anything.
The only current book I can think of that's anything like this one is Steve Miller and Sharon Lee's BALANCE OF TRADE, although that's not very close, either; still, both TRADING IN DANGER and BALANCE OF TRADE show people making a living by trade and enjoying it. I do think if you liked BALANCE OF TRADE, you should like TRADING IN DANGER as well.
The pluses of this book? It has a very strong female heroine who is self-willed and highly motivated, even if she does get down on herself reasonably often (as young adults often do; sometimes even us older ones). I liked the trade, and the military action, and most of the minor characters (especially the woman from the ISC; her line about "not apologizing for not meeting your prejudices" -- paraphrase mine -- because she was a military vet who dressed in a feminine way really tickled me). And it really was a page-turner.
The minuses? Some of the sub-plots were started and stopped, some for comic effect, some perhaps because there was no room for them here. And I'd have preferred to see a few less people saying how wonderful Kylara was/is; yes, I expect it from her father and some of the others, but a little goes a long way. I'd rather intuit that sort of thing by Kylara's actions, and I'd already made up my mind that she was, in the parlance of this book, "a good'un."
So is this a perfect book? No. Is it Ms. Moon's best book? Probably not. Does it measure up to other space adventures Ms. Moon has written? Yes.
Four stars. Recommended.
Barb Caffrey
Rating:
Summary: Trial By Happenstance
Review: Trading in Danger is the first novel in a new Military SF series. Kylara Vatta is a member of a well respected trading family on Slotter Key. Despite, or maybe because of, her family's efforts to dissuade her, Ky is a senior cadet in the planet's military academy. She has exchanged rings with Hal, who has been trading the top position with her since they joined the academy. Now she has been called to the Superintendent's office and asked to resign because an underclassmen has complained on a public news outlet that the academy is unfairly treating his religious group. Ky had thought that she could trust him, but he deliberately took advantage of her gullibility for his own purposes. Ky had been warned by MacRobert, one of the senior NCO, but had trusted her own feelings too much to believe him. Moreover, MacRobert seems to have presented some sort of message for her in a ship model kit, but she doesn't bother to figure it out. A Vatta company car picks up Ky at the Academy front gate while MacRobert has the media reporters lured away to the back. She is driven to the company airfield and then flown back home. There she is fussed over, plied with new clothes, and offered the captaincy of an old ship being flown to the scrapyard on Lastway. She will have a preordered cargo for Belinta and spec cargo for Leonora. Of course, as a brand, spanking new captain, Ky considers the odds of making a profit on the voyage and then bringing her ship up to standards. When she hears from Belinta Customs that they have an agricultural machinery shipment mislaid by Pavrati Interstellar, Ky immediately starts thinking of ways to fetch the missing shipment for the planetary government. After some concentrated negotiating, she unloads her spec cargo and heads for Sabine, the nearest source of ag machinery. Unfortunately, the FTL drive starts falling apart and then Sabine circumspace becomes a warzone. Later the combatants dump fifty hostages in her ship, albeit under contract and with auxiliary materiel and supplies, but still a strain on the ship and crew. This story is a form of trial by happenstance, with Ky performing well personally, but having problems with some of the extra people on board. Ky has a reputation for adopting underdogs, but her real problem is that she naively trusts people who appear trustworthy. Her experiences during this voyage, however, seem to have instilled a much needed touch of cynicism in her character. Although Ky is a merchant captain, her experiences as an officer cadet prove to be very valuable during this voyage. She also gets a opportunity to face down several people who consider her little more than a naive, inexperienced girl. A tough trip, but enlightening. This is supposed to be the first in a new series. The author is going to have to be exceedingly clever to continue this pace in future volumes, particularly since Ky is only a merchant captain. However, the Mercenary company that hired her to house the fifty hostages has actually made an offer of a commission in their unit. Ky might not be a civilian much longer. Highly recommended for Moon fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of adventure among the spaceways with interesting characters and tense situations.
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